The Department of Physics offers a 2 year (4 semesters) Master’s degree program to prepare students for a career in teaching and research. Students will not be allotted any branch of specialization in Physics at the time of admission. The first two semesters will be devoted to the study of foundation courses in Physics. During semester II and III the students will have the freedom to study subjects of his/her choice under the guidance of a faculty advisor. The fourth semester is set apart exclusively for a dissertation project. The entire curriculum is designed to prepare a student to enter a research career in multi-disciplinary areas of science and technology in research organizations and industry. The program emphasizes on developing scientific and innovative spirit, instilling professional ethics and spirit of service to the society at large.

The most attractive feature of the M.Sc. program is the freedom given to the students to decide about domain specialization during the 2nd year of their studies. They would be guided to select from a basket of elective courses focused on a major domain of Physics. They would also have the opportunity to study cross-disciplinary subjects depending on their interest. Thus, the students would be well prepared to
contribute to research in multi-disciplinary fields of contemporary interests. Another prominent feature of the M.Sc. program is the Dissertation project to be carried out in the 4th semester. The students will be allotted a project at the end of the 2nd semester and they would be required to explore the project topic by self-study during the 3rd semester. At the end of this study they would be required to submit a project proposal to carry out a project in the final semester. This study would be carried out under the supervision of a faculty advisor. The project itself can also be carried out in a prominent research organization in India. Thus the project would provide the students with research experience to enable them to continue further into the PhD Program.

Departmental Activities:

Science Academies’ 64th Refresher Course in Experimental Physics (January 2015); Department of Physics conducted Science Academies’ 64th Refresher Course in Experimental Physics (RCEP) from 6th January 2015 to 22nd January 2015. The Refresher Course was funded by Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, and National Academy of Sciences, India at Allahabad, under the Science Education Programme Scheme. Twenty four candidates participated in the Refresher Course. The Course Director was Prof. R. Srinivasan and course coordinator was Dr. Bharat Kumar. Prof. M. Nyayate (Univeristy of Mumbai), Dr. Deepak Samuel, and Dr.Sudeshna, Prof. S. N. Kaul (UoH), Prof. B. S. Krishnamurthy (GUG), Prof. G. Umesh (NITK), and Prof. M. V. N. Murthy (IMSc)were the resource persons. The participants included Science teachers from different First Grade Science Colleges and Engineering Colleges, students M.Sc. (Physics) from various Universities in the Country.

Swatch Bharat Abhiyan @ Department of Physics

Department of Physics participated in the Swatch Bharat Abhiyan. All the members of Department of Physics joined hands with other Science and Engineering Departments to clean the surrounding areas on 15th October 2014.

3. Deepak Samuel; Development and Commissioning of a Complete System for In-Vivo Dosimetry and Range Verification in Proton Therapy, Medical Physics 41, 6 326-326 (2014) American Association of Physicists in Medicine

Seminars / Conferences / Workshops / Symposia / Talks:

Attended the Refresher Course in Experimental Physics held at VidyaVikas University, Mysore in November 2014.

Attended the National Symposium on Particles, Detectors and Instrumentation held at Inter-Institutional Centre for High-Energy Physics (IICHEP), Madurai from 27th-31st March 2015 and presented the following posters

Attended 67th Refresher Course in Experimental Physics held at CUK in from 6th to 22nd January 2015.

Participated in workshop “Year of Crystallography”, on 27-28th March 2015, Department of Physics, Gulbarga University, Gulbarga.

Experimental Particle Physics

The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) with a budget of about 1000 crore has proposed to build a massive 50 kiloton magnetized Iron calorimeter (ICAL) neutrino detector in Tamil Nadu. The objective of this experiment is to measure the mass hierarchy, apart from other neutrino oscillation studies. A large amount of scientific and technical manpower is required for the experiment to be setup and run successfully. The department plans to focus on building detectors and related instrumentation for high energy physics.

Proton Therapy

It is the latest modality to treat cancers with superior dose conformality which leads to better quality of life in contrast to conventional radiation therapy. The department of physics at CUK will take up research tasks of high importance like range verification and in-vivo dosimetry in this field. A couple of major hospitals in India have already planned to setup proton/ heavy ion therapy Center and research work in this field will augment such centers with scientific and technical expertise.

Surface and Interface Sciences and Physics of Soft Matter

The department aims to explore the physical properties at the Nano scale, and comprehend it to realize advanced techniques and tools for the biomedical applications and life sciences. Current focus is on (a) interactions and self-assembly of biological molecules at biotic-abiotic interfaces, (b) scanning probe microscopy based techniques for Nano scale electrical characterization of surfaces in liquid media, and (c) ultrathin films of mesogens.

Nano-magnetism and Spintronics

The magnetism of solids at lower dimensions, i.e. at nanoscale, is of prime interest technologically as well as from the point of view of basic physics. The understanding of nano-magnetism allows us to develop innovative memory technologies and devices working in different regimes. Presently, the department is focussing onto development of novel nano-materials, composites, and their thin films for device applications. Further, we are also into understanding of magneto-electric coupling at the interface of solids to develop novel spintronic device architectures.